


Etch the Stars into My Skin

by daisybrien



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (I guess????), (i guess), Art, Artist Calliope, Artists, Body Image, Body Modification, Body Paint, Body Worship, Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Friendship/Love, Happy, Humor, Intimacy, Kissing, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Nudity, Painting, Post-Canon, Post-Sburb, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Post-Series, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Gestures, Sensuality, Suggestive Themes, Sweet, Touching, i mean id find it hella romantic, there are boobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-09 00:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7779118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We are created by the stuff of stars, the elements of our body composed of the remnants of fading nebulae. It is Calliope's expert hand that brings them out of Roxy, the universes in the two of them made tangible and gorgeous.</p><p>Roxy takes a more active role in Calliope's artistic process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Etch the Stars into My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> UU: yoUr eyes are a canvas  
> UU: yoUr breasts.  
> UU: are also a canvas

Their bed is stripped of its usual fluffy sheets when Roxy finally steps out of the bathroom. The floor is pleasantly cool against her bare feet, fingers clutching the plush, pink bathrobe closed at her belly button as she peers around at their mattress. Its stitched design is visible yet warped through the protective plastic around it, slippery and cold against Roxy’s fingers. There is a tray set up by the other end of the bed, Calliope’s skeletal form bent over various pots and paintbrushes with a keen eye, lower lip sucked beneath her sharp upper teeth as she examines her set up in thorough concentration. Her brow bone furrowed, she taps one claw against the green of her cheek, her other hand hovering over the table as it counts off the paraphernalia present.

Roxy grins, watching in affectionate amusement before catching her attention with a soft cough, sad to jolt Calliope out of her deliberating reverie. But business is business; they had planned this night to themselves, for Roxy to take a tangible, physical role in the musings of Calliope’s mind, and though the premise be unusual, it makes it all the more enticing to participate.

“Everything’s set up,” Calliope chimes. She smiles shyly from the other side of the mattress, the two standing awkwardly, unable to proceed. As the seconds tick by slowly, the curl of her lips start to fade, her voice tinted with hesitation. “Unless, of course, you’ve decided you are not entirely comfortable with the idea. It is fine if you wish to scrap it.”

“I still want to, don’t you worry,” Roxy says. “Do you?”

“Oh, of course! As long as you’re just as happy to go along with me,” Calliope says, nervous giddiness raising the pitch of her voice into pleasant laughter. She turns back to her supplies, clicking her teeth. “I only need some water and we can go ahead. Maybe you would like to lie down for now?”

“Until we see where your artistic genius takes us, I’m assuming?” Roxy says. “How do you want me?”

Callie stutters, the two beginning to blush at the insinuation. “Oh, um, I think,” her tongue tangles on her nerves, cheeks shining bright lime. “Lie on your stomach. I’d like to see to your back first.”

Roxy silently obliges by her request, watching as she scurries to the washroom with mug in hand. She closes the door behind her, the sound of running water muffled behind the wood as she waits, a gentlewoman through and through, for Roxy to ready herself in privacy. 

Roxy snorts with the irony of it, letting her robe slip from her shoulders, tumbling into a soft, tangled lump at her feet. Her skin rises with goose bumps at the touch of cool air against it, her bare body growing accustomed to the new nakedness. She clambers to the bed, the plastic crinkling loudly beneath and sticking cool and fluid against her belly as she sprawls out. She lays her head over crossed arms, peeking out over her hands at the light under the crack of the bathroom door, behind which the tap as long since stopped.

There’s a minute of anticipating silence before she realizes that Calliope is waiting for her to call her back in. Once she’s finished trembling from ill-hidden giggles at Callie’s diffident ignorance regarding action when a human is in their so-called birthday suit – she had asked to see one the first time someone used the phrase during a particularly rowdy party, her eagerness turning quickly to morbid humiliation as Jade had to keep a greatly drunk Jake from climbing on a table to demonstrate what it really was - she offers a smile of lethargic ease from where she has perched her head on her hands. She closes her eyes, the position almost relaxing, even as her body was under the eyes of heavy artistic scrutiny.

“I see you’re all ready to go,” Calliope says. The bed tips to the side under her added weight, Roxy opening an eye to massive emerald irises peering at her, one hand pushing the hair from her face tenderly. They share a soft, happy sigh between the two of them. “You’re comfortable?”

“Yep,” Roxy answers. 

“You don’t need an extra pillow or some such?”

“I’m a’ight.”

“I hope you are not too chilly. Is the room warm enough?”

“Very,” Roxy lies; cold drifts along the valleys of her skin, eager to be covered again. She just isn’t accustomed to it yet, slowly succeeding at willing the chill to be soothing. She offers a sly smirk. “I’ll be much warmer with your hands on me, though.”

“Roxy!” The cry is indignant, but light, like the bony hand that swats at her shoulder playfully. Despite her early hesitation at Roxy’s prone form, she has found her tongue, and her stamina, again. “How indecent.”

“Seems to fit me right now, huh.”

“Oh, shush you,” Callie admonishes, rising from her seat and disappearing from sight at the foot of the bed. “Be honest, because I don’t think you will be warmer when the brushes are on you.”

“You could finger paint.”

“I could,” she muses. The tinkling and clinking of art supplies and the gentle chafing of fresh paint against her palette follow her words. “But it would be a shame not to use the brushes you gifted me.”

“Is that so,” Roxy says, closing her eyes again. She could fall asleep in the pleasant silence that follows, nothing but the quiet tinkering of Calliope’s expert hands sounding just a short distance away, the evening sun soft through the drawn curtains alight on their comfortable intimacy. 

“You ready?” Calliope asks, gently pulling Roxy from her reverie.

“Ready and set,” she answers in a drawl. “Got my running shoes on, hunched over that starting line like a motherfucker. I’m goin’ for gold, babe.”

“Seems so,” Calliope says.

Roxy turns her head onto the other side, grabbing a glimpse at the cherub from the corner of her eye. She takes no notice of the attention on her now, inquisitive eyes focused as the rough pads of her fingertips drift over Roxy’s lower back, softly prodding at the skin with careful hands as if testing its supple give, its resistance as it pushes back against the intruding force. A paintbrush sits gently in her mouth, jaw shaking around the handle; Roxy can see that she is trying to keep the polished wooden handle as pristine as possible, unwilling to accept that it will soon succumb to her teeth like the gnawed splinters of her older set, one she still seems keen on using despite its obvious wear.

With a flourish she twirls it between her fingers, disappearing out of Roxy’s line of sight to do what she can only assume are professional serious artsy things. There’s a clink of a glass, the wet rustle of brush stirring paint.

She begins without another word, her first brushstroke making Roxy stiffen as chilling, wet pigment is drawn over her haphazardly, running back and forth from the dip just above her buttocks up to her shoulder blades. She sucks in a breath between her teeth, trying not to fidget, as what she guesses is some sort of basecoat settles sticky against her like an ill-fitting skin.

“Still alright?” Callie asks, moving back down over her body again.

“Yeah,” Roxy says. “You were right about the cold, though.”

The strokes at her side stop. “I did warn you Roxy,” Calliope moans, tittering with concern. “Maybe I should-“

“Don’t worry,” Roxy interrupts. She is already missing Callie’s glancing touches, the massage of bristles gliding slick against her. “Keep going.”

Calliope doesn’t speak, her voice and hands frozen with skepticism, only continuing once Roxy give her an insistent nudge with her foot. 

The painting commences, Roxy shivering as Calliope fills in the sensitive spots of her body that had previously evaded the brush’s touch; the dip of her waist, the upper curve of her spine and up her neck, matting the baby hairs together at her nape as if dipped in damp glue. Roxy tries to relax, slowly sinking into the mattress beneath her, letting her mind drift off into dreamlike trance. She yields to the whims of the slow rub tracing over the dip and curve of muscle and bone, saddened every time the brush leaves her for a swish in water to be cleaned or pushed through another glob of paint, sleepily sighing with pleasure every time it returns.

The slow, languid strokes across her back slowly begin to grow shorter and more inconsistent. Rather than the uniform patterns of rows marking each ridge of her spine in slow, luxurious pace, they split from each other, tracing unknown forms across her back as designs finally begin to take shape, the image of Calliope’s mind projecting over scarred and freckled skin. The room is silent but for the soft clattering of cups and Callie’s distracted humming, yet the air is abuzz with an unspoken tension, anticipation hanging heavy above them like a healthy smoke, clearing the lungs and mind. Callie’s focus is almost palpable, a curtain drawn over the usual sensitivity of her face. Instead, all that Roxy is able to decipher from glimpsing her out of the corner of her eyes is the attentiveness etched into the furrows of her brow, eyes wide and shimmering, gold flecks of inspiration like fireflies hidden in their deep green. She is engulfed in her artistic process, the flourishes of her hands a result of the enthusiasm running through her veins like a violent sugar rush, pattering firm to accentuate the protrusions of bone and running dizzying swirls in the dips of the fissures in between.

Time wears on, Roxy lulled into peaceful nothingness by the rhythmic ticking of the bedroom clock. The pauses between each brushstroke grow in length, slower now, finishing details in flitting bursts with needle-thin brushes. Roxy raises her head in curiosity, watching Calliope’s face falling with restlessness. Her fingertips hover a hair’s width over the layers of paint now blanketing the entirety of Roxy’s back, eyes absorbing each inch with fine examination. 

“You’re slowing down back there,” Roxy points out. She tries – and subsequently fails – to look at the masterpiece hidden over her shoulder.

“Don’t twist,” Calliope chides, turning Roxy’s head forward. “You’ll ruin it if it is not able to dry flat. You’ll see it when I’m finished.”

“Are you not?” Roxy asks.

“Are you growing bored?”

“Hell nope,” Roxy says. “I’d be upset if you were, it’d be a shame to have you stop admiring my choice backside. We couldn’t end the fun so early on into the evening.”

Calliope only rolls her eyes as Roxy snorts at her own cheesy wit, turning back to her established handiwork. One long, slender claw taps against the corner of her chin thoughtfully, before a quiet solution lights up in her eyes. 

“I think I am finished,” she says, “but only with this part of my canvas.”

Roxy’s heart picks up speed as she watches Callie smile a cheeky grin. She rises from her perch, readying to help her partner off the bed. Her hands carefully roll Roxy onto her side, the plastic covering the bed peeling off her stomach where it had stuck snugly under her weight. With slow, deliberate movement, she is able to perch herself on the edge of the bed, feet flat against the floor, now freely able to watch as Calliope drifts around the room, dragging supplies along, only to stop right in front of Roxy’s vulnerable form. 

There is little tentativeness plaguing the sincerity of her brush’s strokes this time, Calliope beginning almost instantly after Roxy gives a confident nod, both with sheepish smiles across their meek faces. She begins by tracing a wide collar around Roxy’s neck and over her collarbone, pale skin disappearing with each careful touch under a deep purple dark as ink. 

The colour bleeds lower, flowing down into the valley of her chest and flowing to fill the arch formed by the bottom of her ribs, tracing her diaphragm in long, sweeping curves. She can see what beauty the artist is making of her skin now, swirling greens and purples and pinks blending into nebulae against each contour of her body. 

Calliope grows shy as she moves her hands back to each breast, Roxy’s blush matching her own as she speedily swirls the remains of a dying star inward from areola to nipple. Roxy keeps back a moan – and a joke – her lower lip acting as a muzzle as she chews it in between her teeth.

Their fluster continues as Calliope moves back to her stomach; it is innocent now, and she has to scold her canvas for shaking with giggles at the ticklish sensation of her brush as it presses into soft, jelly-like skin. Both are squealing giddily when it dips into Roxy’s belly button, boisterousness loud and contagious. She dots a star system from memory on the scattering of Roxy’s beauty marks just before her left side.

Her descent continues, tracing the plush mountain of each hip. Having forked into two paths, she rejoins them by following the lines of Roxy’s pelvis, making comets’ tails of her stretch marks and ghostly planets over deep scars, distracting herself from the eventually hurried task of brushing through the curly hair between her legs.

Still she dips lower. The dark of eternal night sky blends into spiraling galaxies and fades away, the growing universe sprawling down Roxy’s legs. Stars cluster thickly down her calves in dappled palomino patterns. The birthmark above her knee is transform into a violent supernova.

Rising, Calliope tends to the arms she had neglected until now. She paints Roxy sleeves of pitch void, solar systems shoulder pads that broaden her already wide and powerful stance. Asteroid belts coil like snakes down her arms to her slender wrists.

It grows dark; the sun had long ago dipped over the distant horizon at the gradual turn of the clock’s hands, the grasshoppers finding home in their shared refuge of a garden singing their evening chorus in chirping voices that meet their ears through the open window. The nightly chill cannot touch the two of them now; Roxy shielded by the armour of paint that holds her constant, towering might upright, Calliope’s keen fervor blinding her to the stains blotched in the wrinkles and lines of her hands and drying in her smock, too enchanted by the canvas in front of her to take a break from her progress now. But the ticking of her watch does nothing but risk taking her away from it, time slipping away from them in their hushed conversations and mesmerized awe of each other. Before the bleary eyesight and yawning gasps of exhaustion can claim her, she carefully works through the finer detailing, proving to Roxy – and baffling her - that things so beautiful can be further refined. She dots craters in rock faces and glints of stardust, the rings of Saturn the final touch around Roxy’s finger like a promise.

“I think.” Callie breathes, her voice labored. The bones in her back crack painfully as she straightens. “I’ve finished what I wanted for now.”

Roxy is about to reply before she is interrupted by the soft ivory feel of Callie’s nails drifting under her unpainted palms, tenderly pulling her from her perch. Roxy  
shakes the deadness from her legs, her bottom numb from the unmoving pressure placed on it as she is led back into the bathroom. Calliope turns her towards the mirror, expectantly.

Her reflection is almost unrecognizable.

Her reflection is magnificent.

“You really have a thing for space,” Roxy murmurs breathlessly, cringing at the lame choice of words, although nothing she could muster would do the elegant shine of Calliope’s skill the merit it deserved; how does one describe a masterpiece with the distinction it justly warrants?

Calliope seems to take no mind in the comment. “I should show you the back!” she exclaims, rushing to shuffle through the cupboards for one of Roxy’s wider hand mirrors. She holds it up behind her so she can see it reflected back in the glass in front. “Can you see it well?”

Roxy most certainly can. She gasps, craning her neck to see each minute detail of the spectral hues blossomed across her. There is barely a scrap of the familiar darkness of space she had been staring at for so long, only a hint of it tracing the edges of her body like a frame, blending seamlessly into the homely view painted on her back. Auroras more brilliant than those of the poles’ night skies streak her shoulder blades in blurry lines of reds and oranges and green, a ribbon tied to the top of baby blue clouds acting as the silver lining around pink and yellow skies. At the very base of her spine, the orb of a subtle sun shines, peeking above the hills of a green horizon of stalks and vines; a garden like their own, with trees towering on its border like burly guards, seagulls dotting the scenery above.

“Do you like it?”

Roxy startles as the mirror behind her begins to lower suddenly. Over her shoulder she can just see Calliope’s reflection, hopeful gaze slowly turning to an insecure despair that weighs down her bony shoulders and slumps her back, as if trying to hide herself from an inevitable and harsh disapproval. They meet eyes in the mirror, both of them tearful; Roxy’s those of awe, Calliope’s those of anxiety.

“Callie,” Roxy breathes, mustering a pathetic smile as she tries to fight the overwhelming wonder that stops her words in her throat. “Oh Callie, how could I not?”

Her face lights up, all toothy smile as she basks humbly in her shower of praise. “I don’t know, I just - I’m,” she stutters, worry and inquisitiveness and love swimming through her jade eyes. “I’m glad you do.”

“God, I don’t,” Roxy begins, unable to continue. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no need for that Roxy, can’t find the words? I understand, I’m still so ruffled myself –“

“No,” Roxy interrupts. Calliope looks to her questioningly, raising a brow. “I mean, yeah, a lil’ bit, but, not just that.” There is tension in her arm as she turns; her fingers are still lazily intertwined with Calliope’s. She strengthens their grip, holding her tight. “I want to do the same for you.

“You just brought out a universe in me,” Roxy laughs. Her cheeks hurt with how wide she smiles, the sincerity of it reflected back in Calliope’s face. Her head snaps between each masterpiece, the one on her body drawn full length in their bathroom mirror, and the tiny, loving cherub standing devoted and fortifying by her side. 

“You’ve always been one to me,” Calliope says quietly, her cheek just brushing against Roxy’s skin. It comes away black, but neither mind.

“Well, then it’s hidden itself well,” Roxy laughs, self-deprecating. “And you, showing it to me – so easily - how could I ever do the same?”

“Oh darling,” Calliope shushes. She looks about ready to cry, restraining herself from leaping into Roxy’s open arms and burrow her face in the crook of her neck like she always does, lest she ruin the still drying paint. When she looks up at her, there is nothing but love and gratitude, vividly bright and clear as the art of her hand. There is nothing hiding beneath that happiness; it does not threaten to shift or break like a fragile mask concealing deep uncertainty, just resilient and genuine in itself. “You already have.”

Roxy’s heart swells with something like pride, staring into the eyes of this wonderful girl. “We’re gonna have to wash all this shit off now.”

“We certainly are,” Calliope laughs, the two dissolving into a fit of laughter. 

“Should’ a chosen another canvas, huh? I’m not exactly very permanent.”

“But you make such a perfect one, and that’s what matters,” she says. She stretches up onto her toes, pecking a warm kiss to Roxy’s cheek. She bounces out of the room.

“Would’ a made a good subject, too,” Roxy retorts, a hand lingering over where Callie’s lips had just graced her skin. “Still waiting for my chance to pose for you, ya know!”

“And you’re getting it, no questions asks!” Calliope says. She bounds back through the door, the crafty spark of her eye twinkling as Roxy lights up at the sight of a camera gripped ready in her hands. They both know the night can only grow longer from here, both accepting of it knowing they’ll spend it in the splendor of the other. “You didn’t think I would let the opportunity to document this moment pass, did you?”


End file.
